All About the Celestial Cowl Pattern

The idea of the Celestial Cowl had been on my mind for a while. I'd been picturing a cowl covered in stars, decreasing in density from one end of the cowl to the other, and chose to develop this idea into my next design.

Once I'd decided I would be creating this pattern I started keeping an eye out for the perfect yarn. I knew I wanted to use fingering weight yarn, as I wanted the stars to be quite small. When I was browsing Beehive Yarns' website I spotted a couple of skeins which I thought would work perfectly. For the main colour I chose 'Lady Midnight' - a navy blue with gold stellina - which I thought would be ideal as a contrasting background, with the gold adding some sparkle. As the contrast colour I chose 'Carmelita', a variegated yarn with tones of gold, brown and grey. I think the range of tones really helped add dimension to the stars, rather than them just being a single flat colour.

Before I started designing the cowl I purchased a graph paper notebook; I thought it'd be a perfect way to sketch colourwork ideas for this and future projects. I worked on a few different iterations of the chart for the Celestial Cowl until I felt I'd managed to balance the number of stars, their spacing and density as I'd originally imagined.

Once I was happy with the chart, the next step was to start putting together a draft of the pattern. I knitted a swatch to figure out the sizing, then tried on and measured a number of my cowls to help me decide exactly what size I'd like the Celestial Cowl to be. I could then put the pattern together and draw the final colourwork chart to work with the decided dimensions. With the draft of the pattern complete I could finally knit the cowl.

I was really happy with how the finished cowl turned out, it was exactly as I'd pictured and I was so glad I was able to make it a reality. Although it was originally inspired by the sky and stars, I don't think colours used with this pattern have to be limited to that idea, plus the speckles don't necessarily have to be stars. I think some really unique colour combinations could be used to create some interesting effects. The cowl was quick to knit and only used 131 yards of yarn for the main colour and 40 yards for the contrast colour, so I won't be surprised if I end up using some of the leftover yarn in my stash to knit more Celestial Cowls.

Click the link below to check out the full details of the pattern.